Swedish Radio Program Casts Doubt on Cold Fusion, Rossi's Reputation

Swedish public radio station Sveriges Radio has released the first in a three part report about Andrea Rossi and the E-Cat which examines Andrea Rossi’s reputation, and has a decidedly negative slant — focusing on Rossi’s reputation as a deceiver who uses others to get his dishonest ways. The tone of the piece can be discerned by the lead sentence on the summary posted on Sveriges Radio’s web site:

Researchers from leading Swedish universities may have helped a prison sentenced inventor to sell a machine that a majority of the scientific community dismiss as fake. It is about so-called cold fusion and Italian Andrea Rossi, who claims to have built a machine that produces large amounts of clean and cheap energy.

This is a typical media narrative about Andrea Rossi that has been reflected in other media stories, and in my opinion is one-sided, and it ignores the most important aspects of this story — which is the strong evidence in favor of the E-Cat being a real and potentially revolutionary energy producing technology.

In addition to reading the web summary, I have spoken with a contact in Sweden who has listened to the piece, and from what I have learned, it seems that the overall assumption is that cold fusion is impossible, and Pons and Fleischmann’s research was based on erroneous measurement. The implication, therefore, is that Rossi’s reports cannot be true and he is getting attention and support by being a master manipulator, and is using others (specifically scientists in Sweden) to give the impression that there is something to cold fusion and the E-Cat.

In concentrating on Rossi’s conviction following the closing of his Petroldragon business in Italy in the early 1990s, rather than the evidence that points to the E-Cat being valid, my opinion is that listeners who are looking for an accurate picture of the E-Cat will not be served well by this piece. Of course the timing of this radio reporting is interesting, as we are awaiting the results of important testing that is taking place — and it seems likely that this testing took place in Sweden, presumably with a number Swedish scientists involved.

It may be that this piece will cast doubt in the minds of listeners about the validity of the upcoming report if positive results are announced. As always, I recommend that anyone investigating this subject be open minded and look at the evidence. When I first heard about Rossi and the E-Cat, I was suspicious — but after years of careful examination of all the evidence I can find, the only rational conclusion that I can come to is that the E-Cat works as claimed. See here for more on that.